In present day communications, broadcast service providers are a group of businesses that broadcast programs, such as sports, cartoons, news, documentaries, etc., to public subscribers via media such as a cable system or a satellite network. The broadcast service providers own and operate the facilities from which the broadcasts originate. Construction and operation of these facilities usually involve substantial capital investment. To recoup the investment and make a profit, the broadcast service providers charge fees for the use of their facilities.
Traditionally, broadcast service providers operate their businesses by renting broadcast network capacity to content providers, i.e., organizations that create or aggregate content for the business-to-business or consumer market. Content providers can be producers of virtually any type of program content, such as sports events, drama and comedy shows, business training material, education courses, infomercial, data, etc. Network capacity is basically defined as the amount of capacity (bandwidth) that the operator controls for a facility, this usually being measured in Kbit/sec. The bandwidth typically is a fixed quantity which is a function of the broadcast medium, such as wire or fiber optic cable and satellite. Also, the broadcast service provider often can only operate over a given bandwidth as assigned by a Governmental agency, such as the Federal Communications Commission in the United States. The bandwidth is usually available to the broadcast service provider to rent on a 24 hour per day basis, but this also may be subject to Government regulations and contractual provisions.
Thanks to the availability of network management technology, broadcast service providers have been able to subdivide network capacity and rent single portions (called “transponder space”) to content providers to broadcast their material, usually for the ultimate purpose of producing revenue for the content provider. The transponder space rented can be a certain amount or all of the bandwidth available to the broadcast service provider for a certain period of time. For example, a broadcast server provider may have available a 1 megabit/sec capacity and the content provider needs only 200 Kbit/sec to broadcast his content for a one hour time period. Thus, the broadcast server provider has 800 Kbit/sec space to rent to one or more other content providers for the same time period.
Typically, a content provider has had to sign a rental contract commitment (booking) for a considerable amount of network capacity over a long period of time (for example, several hundred hours of 100 Kbit/sec capacity to be used over a six month period). This often required a substantial up front monetary investment by the content provider. The practice of requiring a substantial up front payment and broadcast time commitment was based on the need of the broadcast service providers to secure the business of content providers by contractually binding their customers.
The evolution of content authoring and content management technologies, such as being able to produce content by computer and with a reduced number of people, has created a number of small and medium-size content provider organizations that produce and need to distribute the content that they produce. Such providers would like to benefit from the advantages offered by broadband broadcast networks in distributing the content, but cannot afford the investment required to rent a full or a substantial part of the full transponder space of a broadcast service provider. Also, the long term contractual approach makes it difficult, if not impossible, for content providers with limited financial resources to access the broadcast networks needed to distribute their content.
Due to competition and the advances in technology, the prices of selling transponder space are falling, thereby eroding a main revenue stream of the broadcast service providers. Thus, the broadcast service providers are looking for new ways to increase their revenue. The new market of energizing content providers represents an interesting financial opportunity for broadcast service providers. To accommodate this, the broadcast service providers must try to restructure their businesses to rent a maximum amount of their network capacity, such as by being able to sell pieces of available transponder space to numerous content providers.
Accordingly, a need exists to accommodate both the new type of content providers and the broadcast service providers in being able to address this new segment of business in a manner that provides benefits to each. This requires proper scheduling of the to available transponder space and booking of the program requests from the various content providers.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/046,901 filed Mar. 24, 1998 (PCT WO 99/49663), entitled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR BROADCAST TRANSMISSION OF MEDIA OBJECTS,” which is assigned to the assignee of the subject application and whose entire disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a new broadband broadcast platform system that supports advanced network management features. The system and method of that application, hereafter called CECTM, assembles content from a number of different content providers, for example, news and infomercials, as well as all other types of content, and provides for distribution of the content at different times of broadcast depending upon the needs of the content provider in the distribution of a particular program. That is, the programs have different durations, require different network capacity and are scheduled for broadcast at different times.
For example, a content provider may want to rent only the network capacity (transponder space) required for one single content transmission, e.g., 128 Kbit/sec, during 50 seconds on a given date. Such a request does not require the need of a long-term rental contract. Through the CECTM a content provider can directly define a broadcast plan by specifying transmission specific parameters such as program desired, start and stop time, required bandwidth and transmission priority. Transmission priority is usually assigned by negotiation between the broadcast service provider and content providers, depending on factors such as price charged for the transponder space at a desired program broadcast time. For example, a content provider pays a low price when he agrees to have his program broadcast at any free time of the network capacity. Such a program would have a low transmission priority as compared to a program guaranteed to be broadcast at a specific time for which the content provider pays a higher rate. Also, priority can be assigned by time of broadcast since the number of potential subscribers available to view a program depends on this, e.g., evening prime time hours as compared to early morning hours.
By using features of the CECTM management system, the broadcast service provider can define new business models based on parameters such as volume of transmitted content, transmission time, content type and number of subscribers. These parameters can be combined to define the cost of broadcast services offered to content providers. For example, the broadcast service provider can decide to charge content providers based on the volume of content transmitted, regardless of transmission time. Alternatively, a higher charge could be applied if the content is transmitted during prime time hours, i.e., a time during which traffic tends to be more intense.